Produced by John Hamm and David Widger
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
by Thomas Hardy
1.
One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached
one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a
child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper
Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick
hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from
an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their
appearance just now.
The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he
showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost
perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the
remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn
buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid
with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a
rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife,
a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured,
springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from
the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and
plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference
personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly
interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as
he paced along.
What was really peculiar, however, in this couple's progress, and would
have attracted the attention of any casual observer otherwise disposed
to overlook them, was the perfect silence they preserved. They walked
side by side in such a way as to suggest afar off the low, easy,
confidential chat of people full of reciprocity; but on closer view it
could be discerned that the man was reading, or pretending to read, a
ballad sheet which he kept before his eyes with some difficulty by the
hand that was passed through the basket strap. Whether this apparent
cause were the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape
an intercourse that would have been irksome to him, nobody but himself
could have said precisely; but his taciturnity was unbroken, and the
woman enjoyed no society whatever from his presence. Virtually she
walked the highway alone, save for the child she bore. Sometimes the
man's bent elbow almost touched her shoulder, for she kept as close to
his side as was possible without actual contact, but she seemed to
have no idea of taking his arm, nor he of offering it; and far from
exhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it
as a natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little group,
it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child - a tiny girl in
short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn - and the murmured babble of
the child in reply.
The chief - almost the only - attraction of the young woman's face was its
mobility. When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty,
and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features
caught slantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made
transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips.
When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking,
she had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything
possible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play. The
first phase was the work of Nature, the second probably of civilization.
That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of
the girl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such
relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale
familiarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as they
moved down the road.
The wife mostly kept her eyes fixed ahead, though with little
interest - the scene for that matter being one that might have been
matched at almost any spot in any county in England at this time of
the year; a road neither straight nor crooked, neither level nor hilly,
bordered by hedges, trees, and other vegetation, which had entered the
blackened-green stage of colour that the doomed leaves pass through on
their way to dingy, and yellow, and red. The grassy margin of the bank,
and the nearest hedgerow boughs, were powdered by the dust that had been
stirred over them by hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on the road
deadening their footfalls like a carpet; and this, with the aforesaid
total absence of conversation, allowed every extraneous sound to be
heard.
For a long time there was none, beyond the voice of a weak bird singing
a trite old evening song that might doubtless have been heard on the
hill at the same hour, and with the self-same trills, quavers, and
breves, at any sunset of that season for centuries untold. But as they
approached the village sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their
ears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from
view by foliage. When the outlying houses of Weydon-Priors could just be
described, the family group was met by a turnip-hoer with his hoe on
his shoulder, and his dinner-bag suspended from it. The reader promptly
glanced up.
"Any trade doing here?" he asked phlegmatically, designating the village
in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the labourer did
not understand him, he added, "Anything in the hay-trussing line?"
The turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. "Why, save the man,
what wisdom's in him that 'a should come to Weydon for a job of that
sort this time o' year?"
"Then is there any house to let - a little small new cottage just a
builded, or such like?" asked the other.
The pessimist still maintained a negative. "Pulling down is more the
nater of Weydon. There were five houses cleared away last year, and
three this; and the volk nowhere to go - no, not so much as a thatched
hurdle; that's the way o' Weydon-Priors."
The hay-trusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some
superciliousness. Looking towards the village, he continued, "There is
something going on here, however, is there not?"
"Ay. 'Tis Fair Day. Though what you hear now is little more than the
clatter and scurry of getting away the money o' children and fools, for
the real business is done earlier than this. I've been working within
sound o't all day, but I didn't go up - not I. 'Twas no business of
mine."
The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the
Fair-field, which showed standing-places and pens where many hundreds of
horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but
were now in great part taken away. At present, as their informant had
observed, but little real business remained on hand, the chief being the
sale by auction of a few inferior animals, that could not otherwise
be disposed of, and had been absolutely refused by the better class
of traders, who came and went early. Yet the crowd was denser now
than during the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors,
including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two come on
furlough, village shopkeepers, and the like, having latterly flocked in;
persons whose activities found a congenial field among the peep-shows,
toy-stands, waxworks, inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who
travelled for the public good, thimble-riggers, nick-nack vendors, and
readers of Fate.
Neither of our pedestrians had much heart for these things, and they
looked around for a refreshment tent among the many which dotted the
down. Two, which stood nearest to them in the ochreous haze of expiring
sunlight, seemed almost equally inviting. One was formed of new,
milk-hued canvas, and bore red flags on its summit; it announced "Good
Home-brewed Beer, Ale, and Cyder." The other was less new; a little iron
stove-pipe came out of it at the back and in front appeared the placard,
"Good Furmity Sold Hear." The man mentally weighed the two inscriptions
and inclined to the former tent.
"No - no - the other one," said the woman. "I always like furmity; and so
does Elizabeth-Jane; and so will you. It is nourishing after a long hard
day."
"I've never tasted it," said the man. However, he gave way to her
representations, and they entered the furmity booth forthwith.
A rather numerous company appeared within, seated at the long narrow
tables that ran down the tent on each side. At the upper end stood a
stove, containing a charcoal fire, over which hung a large three-legged
crock, sufficiently polished round the rim to show that it was made
of bell-metal. A haggish creature of about fifty presided, in a white
apron, which as it threw an air of respectability over her as far as
it extended, was made so wide as to reach nearly round her waist. She
slowly stirred the contents of the pot. The dull scrape of her large
spoon was audible throughout the tent as she thus kept from burning the
mixture of corn in the grain, flour, milk, raisins, currants, and what
not, that composed the antiquated slop in which she dealt. Vessels
holding the separate ingredients stood on a white-clothed table of
boards and trestles close by.
The young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture, steaming
hot, and sat down to consume it at leisure. This was very well so far,
for furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a
food as could be obtained within the four seas; though, to those not
accustomed to it, the grains of wheat swollen as large as lemon-pips,
which floated on its surface, might have a deterrent effect at first.
But there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance; and the
man, with the instinct of a perverse character, scented it quickly.
After a mincing attack on his bowl, he watched the hag's proceedings
from the corner of his eye, and saw the game she played. He winked to
her, and passed up his basin in reply to her nod; when she took a bottle
from under the table, slily measured out a quantity of its contents, and
tipped the same into the man's furmity. The liquor poured in was rum.
The man as slily sent back money in payment.
He found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to his
satisfaction than it had been in its natural state. His wife had
observed the proceeding with much uneasiness; but he persuaded her to
have hers laced also, and she agreed to a milder allowance after some
misgiving.
The man finished his basin, and called for another, the rum being
signalled for in yet stronger proportion. The effect of it was soon
apparent in his manner, and his wife but too sadly perceived that in
strenuously steering off the rocks of the licensed liquor-tent she had
only got into maelstrom depths here amongst the smugglers.
The child began to prattle impatiently, and the wife more than once said
to her husband, "Michael, how about our lodging? You know we may have
trouble in getting it if we don't go soon."
But he turned a deaf ear to those bird-like chirpings. He talked loud to
the company. The child's black eyes, after slow, round, ruminating gazes
at the candles when they were lighted, fell together; then they opened,
then shut again, and she slept.
At the end of the first basin the man had risen to serenity; at the
second he was jovial; at the third, argumentative, at the fourth, the
qualities signified by the shape of his face, the occasional clench of
his mouth, and the fiery spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his
conduct; he was overbearing - even brilliantly quarrelsome.
The conversation took a high turn, as it often does on such occasions.
The ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the
frustration of many a promising youth's high aims and hopes and the
extinction of his energies by an early imprudent marriage, was the
theme.
"I did for myself that way thoroughly," said the trusser with a
contemplative bitterness that was well-night resentful. "I married at
eighteen, like the fool that I was; and this is the consequence o't." He
pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring
out the penuriousness of the exhibition.
The young woman his wife, who seemed accustomed to such remarks, acted
as if she did not hear them, and continued her intermittent private
words of tender trifles to the sleeping and waking child, who was just
big enough to be placed for a moment on the bench beside her when she
wished to ease her arms. The man continued -
"I haven't more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet I am a good
experienced hand in my line. I'd challenge England to beat me in the
fodder business; and if I were a free man again I'd be worth a thousand
pound before I'd done o't. But a fellow never knows these little things
till all chance of acting upon 'em is past."
The auctioneer selling the old horses in the field outside could be
heard saying, "Now this is the last lot - now who'll take the last
lot for a song? Shall I say forty shillings? 'Tis a very promising
broodmare, a trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with the
hoss at all, except that she's a little holler in the back and had her
left eye knocked out by the kick of another, her own sister, coming
along the road."
"For my part I don't see why men who have got wives and don't want 'em,
shouldn't get rid of 'em as these gipsy fellows do their old horses,"
said the man in the tent. "Why shouldn't they put 'em up and sell 'em
by auction to men who are in need of such articles? Hey? Why, begad, I'd
sell mine this minute if anybody would buy her!"
"There's them that would do that," some of the guests replied, looking
at the woman, who was by no means ill-favoured.
"True," said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine polish about
the collar, elbows, seams, and shoulder-blades that long-continued
friction with grimy surfaces will produce, and which is usually more
desired on furniture than on clothes. From his appearance he had
possibly been in former time groom or coachman to some neighbouring
county family. "I've had my breedings in as good circles, I may say, as
any man," he added, "and I know true cultivation, or nobody do; and I
can declare she's got it - in the bone, mind ye, I say - as much as any
female in the fair - though it may want a little bringing out." Then,
crossing his legs, he resumed his pipe with a nicely-adjusted gaze at a
point in the air.
The fuddled young husband stared for a few seconds at this unexpected
praise of his wife, half in doubt of the wisdom of his own attitude
towards the possessor of such qualities. But he speedily lapsed into his
former conviction, and said harshly -
"Well, then, now is your chance; I am open to an offer for this gem o'
creation."
She turned to her husband and murmured, "Michael, you have talked this
nonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it
once too often, mind!"
"I know I've said it before; I meant it. All I want is a buyer."
At the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season, which had by
chance found its way through an opening into the upper part of the tent,
flew to and from quick curves above their heads, causing all eyes to
follow it absently. In watching the bird till it made its escape the
assembled company neglected to respond to the workman's offer, and the
subject dropped.
But a quarter of an hour later the man, who had gone on lacing his
furmity more and more heavily, though he was either so strong-minded or
such an intrepid toper that he still appeared fairly sober, recurred to
the old strain, as in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the
original theme. "Here - I am waiting to know about this offer of mine.
The woman is no good to me. Who'll have her?"
The company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the renewed
inquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation. The woman whispered;
she was imploring and anxious: "Come, come, it is getting dark, and
this nonsense won't do. If you don't come along, I shall go without you.
Come!"
She waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes the man broke
in upon the desultory conversation of the furmity drinkers with. "I
asked this question, and nobody answered to 't. Will any Jack Rag or Tom
Straw among ye buy my goods?"
The woman's manner changed, and her face assumed the grim shape and
colour of which mention has been made.
"Mike, Mike," she said; "this is getting serious. O! - too serious!"
"Will anybody buy her?" said the man.
"I wish somebody would," said she firmly. "Her present owner is not at
all to her liking!"
"Nor you to mine," said he. "So we are agreed about that. Gentlemen, you
hear? It's an agreement to part. She shall take the girl if she wants
to, and go her ways. I'll take my tools, and go my ways. 'Tis simple as
Scripture history. Now then, stand up, Susan, and show yourself."
"Don't, my chiel," whispered a buxom staylace dealer in voluminous
petticoats, who sat near the woman; "yer good man don't know what he's
saying."
The woman, however, did stand up. "Now, who's auctioneer?" cried the
hay-trusser.
"I be," promptly answered a short man, with a nose resembling a copper
knob, a damp voice, and eyes like button-holes. "Who'll make an offer
for this lady?"
The woman looked on the ground, as if she maintained her position by a
supreme effort of will.
"Five shillings," said someone, at which there was a laugh.
"No insults," said the husband. "Who'll say a guinea?"
Nobody answered; and the female dealer in staylaces interposed.
"Behave yerself moral, good man, for Heaven's love! Ah, what a cruelty
is the poor soul married to! Bed and board is dear at some figures 'pon
my 'vation 'tis!"
"Set it higher, auctioneer," said the trusser.
"Two guineas!" said the auctioneer; and no one replied.
"If they don't take her for that, in ten seconds they'll have to give
more," said the husband. "Very well. Now auctioneer, add another."
"Three guineas - going for three guineas!" said the rheumy man.
"No bid?" said the husband. "Good Lord, why she's cost me fifty times
the money, if a penny. Go on."
"Four guineas!" cried the auctioneer.
"I'll tell ye what - I won't sell her for less than five," said the
husband, bringing down his fist so that the basins danced. "I'll sell
her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat
her well; and he shall have her for ever, and never hear aught o' me.
But she shan't go for less. Now then - five guineas - and she's yours.
Susan, you agree?"
She bowed her head with absolute indifference.
"Five guineas," said the auctioneer, "or she'll be withdrawn. Do anybody
give it? The last time. Yes or no?"
"Yes," said a loud voice from the doorway.
All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed
the door of the tent was a sailor, who, unobserved by the rest, had
arrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence
followed his affirmation.
"You say you do?" asked the husband, staring at him.
"I say so," replied the sailor.
"Saying is one thing, and paying is another. Where's the money?"
The sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman, came in,
unfolded five crisp pieces of paper, and threw them down upon the
tablecloth. They were Bank-of-England notes for five pounds. Upon the
face of this he clinked down the shillings severally - one, two, three,
four, five.
The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for the
same till then deemed slightly hypothetical had a great effect upon
the spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief
actors, and then upon the notes as they lay, weighted by the shillings,
on the table.
Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the
man, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was really in earnest.
The spectators had indeed taken the proceedings throughout as a piece of
mirthful irony carried to extremes; and had assumed that, being out
of work, he was, as a consequence, out of temper with the world, and
society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real
cash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour
seemed to fill the tent, and change the aspect of all therein. The
mirth-wrinkles left the listeners' faces, and they waited with parting
lips.
"Now," said the woman, breaking the silence, so that her low dry voice
sounded quite loud, "before you go further, Michael, listen to me. If
you touch that money, I and this girl go with the man. Mind, it is a
joke no longer."
"A joke? Of course it is not a joke!" shouted her husband, his
resentment rising at her suggestion. "I take the money; the sailor takes
you. That's plain enough. It has been done elsewhere - and why not here?"
"'Tis quite on the understanding that the young woman is willing," said
the sailor blandly. "I wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world."
"Faith, nor I," said her husband. "But she is willing, provided she can
have the child. She said so only the other day when I talked o't!"
"That you swear?" said the sailor to her.
"I do," said she, after glancing at her husband's face and seeing no
repentance there.
"Very well, she shall have the child, and the bargain's complete," said
the trusser. He took the sailor's notes and deliberately folded them,
and put them with the shillings in a high remote pocket, with an air of
finality.
The sailor looked at the woman and smiled. "Come along!" he said kindly.
"The little one too - the more the merrier!" She paused for an instant,
with a close glance at him. Then dropping her eyes again, and saying
nothing, she took up the child and followed him as he made towards the
door. On reaching it, she turned, and pulling off her wedding-ring,
flung it across the booth in the hay-trusser's face.
"Mike," she said, "I've lived with thee a couple of years, and had
nothing but temper! Now I'm no more to 'ee; I'll try my luck elsewhere.
'Twill be better for me and Elizabeth-Jane, both. So good-bye!"
Seizing the sailor's arm with her right hand, and mounting the little
girl on her left, she went out of the tent sobbing bitterly.
A stolid look of concern filled the husband's face, as if, after all, he
had not quite anticipated this ending; and some of the guests laughed.
"Is she gone?" he said.
"Faith, ay! she's gone clane enough," said some rustics near the door.
He rose and walked to the entrance with the careful tread of one
conscious of his alcoholic load. Some others followed, and they stood
looking into the twilight. The difference between the peacefulness of
inferior nature and the wilful hostilities of mankind was very apparent
at this place. In contrast with the harshness of the act just ended
within the tent was the sight of several horses crossing their necks and
rubbing each other lovingly as they waited in patience to be harnessed
for the homeward journey. Outside the fair, in the valleys and woods,
all was quiet. The sun had recently set, and the west heaven was hung
with rosy cloud, which seemed permanent, yet slowly changed. To watch
it was like looking at some grand feat of stagery from a darkened
auditorium. In presence of this scene after the other there was a
natural instinct to abjure man as the blot on an otherwise kindly
universe; till it was remembered that all terrestrial conditions were
intermittent, and that mankind might some night be innocently sleeping
when these quiet objects were raging loud.
"Where do the sailor live?" asked a spectator, when they had vainly
gazed around.
"God knows that," replied the man who had seen high life. "He's without
doubt a stranger here."
"He came in about five minutes ago," said the furmity woman, joining the
rest with her hands on her hips. "And then 'a stepped back, and then 'a
looked in again. I'm not a penny the better for him."
"Serves the husband well be-right," said the staylace vendor. "A comely
respectable body like her - what can a man want more? I glory in the
woman's sperrit. I'd ha' done it myself - od send if I wouldn't, if a
husband had behaved so to me! I'd go, and 'a might call, and call, till
his keacorn was raw; but I'd never come back - no, not till the great
trumpet, would I!"
"Well, the woman will be better off," said another of a more
deliberative turn. "For seafaring natures be very good shelter for shorn
lambs, and the man do seem to have plenty of money, which is what she's
not been used to lately, by all showings."
"Mark me - I'll not go after her!" said the trusser, returning doggedly
to his seat. "Let her go! If she's up to such vagaries she must suffer
for 'em. She'd no business to take the maid - 'tis my maid; and if it
were the doing again she shouldn't have her!"
Perhaps from some little sense of having countenanced an indefensible
proceeding, perhaps because it was late, the customers thinned away
from the tent shortly after this episode. The man stretched his elbows
forward on the table leant his face upon his arms, and soon began to
snore. The furmity seller decided to close for the night, and after
seeing the rum-bottles, milk, corn, raisins, etc., that remained on
hand, loaded into the cart, came to where the man reclined. She shook
him, but could not wake him. As the tent was not to be struck that
night, the fair continuing for two or three days, she decided to let the
sleeper, who was obviously no tramp, stay where he was, and his basket
with him. Extinguishing the last candle, and lowering the flap of the
tent, she left it, and drove away.
2.
The morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when
the man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole atmosphere of the marquee,
and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round it. Besides
the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked about - at the
benches - at the table supported by trestles - at his basket of tools - at
the stove where the furmity had been boiled - at the empty basins - at
some shed grains of wheat - at the corks which dotted the grassy floor.
Among the odds and ends he discerned a little shining object, and picked
it up. It was his wife's ring.
A confused picture of the events of the previous evening seemed to come
back to him, and he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket. A rustling
revealed the sailor's bank-notes thrust carelessly in.
This second verification of his dim memories was enough; he knew now
they were not dreams. He remained seated, looking on the ground for some
time. "I must get out of this as soon as I can," he said deliberately
at last, with the air of one who could not catch his thoughts without
pronouncing them. "She's gone - to be sure she is - gone with that sailor
who bought her, and little Elizabeth-Jane. We walked here, and I had the
furmity, and rum in it - and sold her. Yes, that's what's happened and
here am I. Now, what am I to do - am I sober enough to walk, I wonder?"
He stood up, found that he was in fairly good condition for progress,
unencumbered. Next he shouldered his tool basket, and found he could
carry it. Then lifting the tent door he emerged into the open air.
Here the man looked around with gloomy curiosity. The freshness of the
September morning inspired and braced him as he stood. He and his family
had been weary when they arrived the night before, and they had observed
but little of the place; so that he now beheld it as a new thing. It
exhibited itself as the top of an open down, bounded on one extreme by
a plantation, and approached by a winding road. At the bottom stood the
village which lent its name to the upland and the annual fair that was
held thereon. The spot stretched downward into valleys, and onward to
other uplands, dotted with barrows, and trenched with the remains of
prehistoric forts. The whole scene lay under the rays of a newly risen
sun, which had not as yet dried a single blade of the heavily dewed
grass, whereon the shadows of the yellow and red vans were projected far
away, those thrown by the felloe of each wheel being elongated in shape
to the orbit of a comet. All the gipsies and showmen who had remained
on the ground lay snug within their carts and tents or wrapped in
horse-cloths under them, and were silent and still as death, with the
exception of an occasional snore that revealed their presence. But
the Seven Sleepers had a dog; and dogs of the mysterious breeds that
vagrants own, that are as much like cats as dogs and as much like foxes
as cats also lay about here. A little one started up under one of the
carts, barked as a matter of principle, and quickly lay down again.
He was the only positive spectator of the hay-trusser's exit from the
Weydon Fair-field.
This seemed to accord with his desire. He went on in silent thought,
unheeding the yellowhammers which flitted about the hedges with straws
in their bills, the crowns of the mushrooms, and the tinkling of local
sheep-bells, whose wearer had had the good fortune not to be included
in the fair. When he reached a lane, a good mile from the scene of the
previous evening, the man pitched his basket and leant upon a gate. A
difficult problem or two occupied his mind.
"Did I tell my name to anybody last night, or didn't I tell my name?"
he said to himself; and at last concluded that he did not. His general
demeanour was enough to show how he was surprised and nettled that his
wife had taken him so literally - as much could be seen in his face, and
in the way he nibbled a straw which he pulled from the hedge. He knew
that she must have been somewhat excited to do this; moreover, she
must have believed that there was some sort of binding force in the
transaction. On this latter point he felt almost certain, knowing her
freedom from levity of character, and the extreme simplicity of her
intellect. There may, too, have been enough recklessness and resentment
beneath her ordinary placidity to make her stifle any momentary doubts.
On a previous occasion when he had declared during a fuddle that he
would dispose of her as he had done, she had replied that she would not
hear him say that many times more before it happened, in the resigned
tones of a fatalist.... "Yet she knows I am not in my senses when I do
that!" he exclaimed. "Well, I must walk about till I find her....Seize
her, why didn't she know better than bring me into this disgrace!" he
roared out. "She wasn't queer if I was. 'Tis like Susan to show such
idiotic simplicity. Meek - that meekness has done me more harm than the
bitterest temper!"
When he was calmer he turned to his original conviction that he must
somehow find her and his little Elizabeth-Jane, and put up with the
shame as best he could. It was of his own making, and he ought to bear
it. But first he resolved to register an oath, a greater oath than he
had ever sworn before: and to do it properly he required a fit place and
imagery; for there was something fetichistic in this man's beliefs.
He shouldered his basket and moved on, casting his eyes inquisitively
round upon the landscape as he walked, and at the distance of three or
four miles perceived the roofs of a village and the tower of a church.
He instantly made towards the latter object. The village was quite
still, it being that motionless hour of rustic daily life which fills
the interval between the departure of the field-labourers to their work,
and the rising of their wives and daughters to prepare the breakfast for
their return. Hence he reached the church without observation, and the
door being only latched he entered. The hay-trusser deposited his basket
by the font, went up the nave till he reached the altar-rails, and
opening the gate entered the sacrarium, where he seemed to feel a
sense of the strangeness for a moment; then he knelt upon the
footpace. Dropping his head upon the clamped book which lay on the
Communion-table, he said aloud -
"I, Michael Henchard, on this morning of the sixteenth of September, do
take an oath before God here in this solemn place that I will avoid all
strong liquors for the space of twenty-one years to come, being a year
for every year that I have lived. And this I swear upon the book before
me; and may I be strook dumb, blind, and helpless, if I break this my
oath!"
When he had said it and kissed the big book, the hay-trusser arose,
and seemed relieved at having made a start in a new direction. While
standing in the porch a moment he saw a thick jet of wood smoke suddenly
start up from the red chimney of a cottage near, and knew that the
occupant had just lit her fire. He went round to the door, and the
housewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a trifling payment,
which was done. Then he started on the search for his wife and child.
The perplexing nature of the undertaking became apparent soon enough.
Though he examined and inquired, and walked hither and thither day after
day, no such characters as those he described had anywhere been seen
since the evening of the fair. To add to the difficulty he could gain
no sound of the sailor's name. As money was short with him he decided,
after some hesitation, to spend the sailor's money in the prosecution
of this search; but it was equally in vain. The truth was that a
certain shyness of revealing his conduct prevented Michael Henchard from
following up the investigation with the loud hue-and-cry such a pursuit
demanded to render it effectual; and it was probably for this reason
that he obtained no clue, though everything was done by him that did not
involve an explanation of the circumstances under which he had lost her.
Weeks counted up to months, and still he searched on, maintaining
himself by small jobs of work in the intervals. By this time he had
arrived at a seaport, and there he derived intelligence that persons
answering somewhat to his description had emigrated a little time
before. Then he said he would search no longer, and that he would go and
settle in the district which he had had for some time in his mind.
Next day he started, journeying south-westward, and did not pause,
except for nights' lodgings, till he reached the town of Casterbridge,
in a far distant part of Wessex.
3.
The highroad into the village of Weydon-Priors was again carpeted with
dust. The trees had put on as of yore their aspect of dingy green, and
where the Henchard family of three had once walked along, two persons
not unconnected with the family walked now.
The scene in its broad aspect had so much of its previous character,
even to the voices and rattle from the neighbouring village down,
that it might for that matter have been the afternoon following the
previously recorded episode. Change was only to be observed in details;
but here it was obvious that a long procession of years had passed by.
One of the two who walked the road was she who had figured as the young
wife of Henchard on the previous occasion; now her face had lost much of
its rotundity; her skin had undergone a textural change; and though her
hair had not lost colour it was considerably thinner than heretofore.
She was dressed in the mourning clothes of a widow. Her companion,
also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about eighteen,
completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence youth, which is
itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour.
A glance was sufficient to inform the eye that this was Susan Henchard's
grown-up daughter. While life's middle summer had set its hardening
mark on the mother's face, her former spring-like specialities were
transferred so dexterously by Time to the second figure, her child,
that the absence of certain facts within her mother's knowledge from the
girl's mind would have seemed for the moment, to one reflecting on those
facts, to be a curious imperfection in Nature's powers of continuity.
They walked with joined hands, and it could be perceived that this was
the act of simple affection. The daughter carried in her outer hand
a withy basket of old-fashioned make; the mother a blue bundle, which
contrasted oddly with her black stuff gown.
Reaching the outskirts of the village they pursued the same track as
formerly, and ascended to the fair. Here, too it was evident that the
years had told. Certain mechanical improvements might have been noticed
in the roundabouts and high-fliers, machines for testing rustic strength
and weight, and in the erections devoted to shooting for nuts. But the
real business of the fair had considerably dwindled. The new periodical
great markets of neighbouring towns were beginning to interfere
seriously with the trade carried on here for centuries. The pens for
sheep, the tie-ropes for horses, were about half as long as they had
been. The stalls of tailors, hosiers, coopers, linen-drapers, and other
such trades had almost disappeared, and the vehicles were far less
numerous. The mother and daughter threaded the crowd for some little
distance, and then stood still.
"Why did we hinder our time by coming in here? I thought you wished to
get onward?" said the maiden.
"Yes, my dear Elizabeth-Jane," explained the other. "But I had a fancy
for looking up here."
"Why?"
"It was here I first met with Newson - on such a day as this."
"First met with father here? Yes, you have told me so before. And now
he's drowned and gone from us!" As she spoke the girl drew a card from
her pocket and looked at it with a sigh. It was edged with black, and
inscribed within a design resembling a mural tablet were the words, "In
affectionate memory of Richard Newson, mariner, who was unfortunately
lost at sea, in the month of November 184 - , aged forty-one years."
"And it was here," continued her mother, with more hesitation, "that I
last saw the relation we are going to look for - Mr. Michael Henchard."
"What is his exact kin to us, mother? I have never clearly had it told
me."
"He is, or was - for he may be dead - a connection by marriage," said her
mother deliberately.
"That's exactly what you have said a score of times before!" replied the
young woman, looking about her inattentively. "He's not a near relation,
I suppose?"
"Not by any means."
"He was a hay-trusser, wasn't he, when you last heard of him?
"He was."
"I suppose he never knew me?" the girl innocently continued.
Mrs. Henchard paused for a moment, and answered un-easily, "Of course
not, Elizabeth-Jane. But come this way." She moved on to another part of
the field.
"It is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should think," the
daughter observed, as she gazed round about. "People at fairs change
like the leaves of trees; and I daresay you are the only one here to-day
who was here all those years ago."
"I am not so sure of that," said Mrs. Newson, as she now called herself,
keenly eyeing something under a green bank a little way off. "See
there."
The daughter looked in the direction signified. The object pointed
out was a tripod of sticks stuck into the earth, from which hung a
three-legged crock, kept hot by a smouldering wood fire beneath. Over
the pot stooped an old woman haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She
stirred the contents of the pot with a large spoon, and occasionally
croaked in a broken voice, "Good furmity sold here!"
It was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tent - once thriving,